Category: Best Related Work
Slates: Rabid Puppies & Sad Puppies
This. Was. Shit.
Moreover, Wisdom from My Internet is hard evidence of the fact that there were at least 200 sheer, hundred-percent, honest-go-god trolls sending in nominating ballots. It’s a collection of supposedly humorous, bad to reprehensible tweets with no SFF content whatsoever and — let’s face it — it’s on the ballot to piss off anybody who voted for Kameron Hurley last year.
The time I had to use to write these three sentences is all I’m going to devote to discussing this drivel.
Score: 0/10.
Spacefaring, Extradimensional Happy Kittens 
Cruel but fair.
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Aw, c’mon: tell us how you really feel.
(Actually, having taken an eleven-foot pole to this particular “work”, the review is entirely accurate but the rating given is far too high: minus seven would be a better figure.)
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‘It’s on the ballot to piss off anybody who voted for Kameron Hurley last year’
What do you think of the claim that Hurley’s win last year was nothing to do with SFF, so turn-about is fair play?
I think there is some justification for the claim. Hurley was writing about female soldiers in resistance armies, and that’s not immediately obviously SFF related.
I think that one can claim it’s related because many fantasy books claim to be based in a ‘realistic’ medieval world. If they are, they should probably be aware that resistance fighters can be women. It is a little tenuous though.
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I don’t know about resistance fighters, but I certainly think that it’s related to the discussion about female representation in quasi-historical fantasy. I mean, more female vikings, please.
It wasn’t the first thing (or second or third thing) I voted for last year, even though it was extremely interesting.
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The ‘resistance fighters’ thing stuck in my mind because of the subsequent criticism Hurley got for the piece. When she’s talking about fighting, the statistic that she repeats is that resistance armies are often about 20 – 30% women. She gave the example of the ANC and Shaka Zuku in her article, but I think the Kurds fighting against ISIS at the moment are about 30% women, too.
Anyway, when I see puppy-ish people complaining that ‘We Have Always Fought’ didn’t deserve the award, they’re usually claiming that it’s ludicrous to imagine that women have ever fought – great armies have always been composed of men and lead by men. And it makes me grind my teeth because she was talking about a specific context that didn’t include conscripted armies or mercenaries or anything like that.
And yes – more vikings!
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“A little tenuous” is wildly different from “zero SFF content – just troll tweets/snippets.” Hurley wrote about various things (not just female resistance soldiers) and brought her thoughts and anecdotes together to make a points about writting SFF – granted, it applies beyond SFF, and her points weren’t JUST about writing. But to me, that makes all the difference – she connected it to SF and, it seems, wrote it as part of a larger conversation GOING ON IN SFF CIRCLES about accurate representation, etc. (which makes it more strongly connected to the genre, IMHO).
So while I didn’t nominate or vote for it, but I don’t have a problem with it as a related work, and can see why folks did. Unlike with Williamson’s, which had ZERO SFF connection, and seems very obviously to have been nom’d just to annoy people. I sincerly doubt ANYONE nom’d Hurley’s piece to piss off right wingers . . . another difference here.
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Er, by which I mean, I can see why folks did nominate/vote for it. (I can’t see why anyone would have a problem with it as a related work.) Sorry for the unclear start to my second paragraph. (blush)
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Oh, I like your point about it being part of a conversation GOING ON IN SFF CIRCLES. I think that’s probably another reason why puppyish people found it difficult. I think the past few months have made it clear that puppies and Worldcon have almost no overlap – look at the way the puppies continually fail to understand why fans or angry or how worldcon is structured. Since they’re not part of the conversation, they’re reading it without context and that makes it seem even more incongruous from their perspective.
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The issue you probably can raise re Hurley’s win is that is was just a single blog post, and awarding something like that with a Hugo may not be so great of an idea. Now there are several very short pieces on the final ballot and I do hope that this category doesn’t become the Hugo for Best Article.
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The only reason I wish this were longer is that it would be so entertaining. I slogged my way through as much ‘wisdom’ as I could manage. Ye gods. It’s poorly formatted and my eyes glazed over.
Pluviann, that’s an excellent point–even worse, they don’t seem to know (Brad and Larry do, of course, but didn’t bother to mention this) that Worldcon (A) is all-volunteer-run; and (B) requires a *massive* amount of man-hours to pull off. And that’s *fine.* No one would’ve minded if people had just voted for the first time off of a rec list of “things I enjoyed.” It’s the combined sense of entitled to an award, ignorance about the history of the organization that runs the award, imagined persecution, and rage about things (Brandon Eich of Mozilla’s firing) that have NOTHING TO DO with Worldcon or anyone who goes.
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The ‘Science is Never Settled’ essay might get away with justifying itself on the grounds of being tenuously linked. Even so it is still less relevant than Hurley’s piece last year. The Hot Equations justifies its presence better (i.e. science fas guidance for writers just as Hurley’s piece was gender-composition-of-historical-fighting-forces)
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Fair and not cruel. Honestly, no matter how bad it is or being on a slate – lack of SF content would’ve killed it for me regardless. “Written by someone who writes F/SF” does not make something a related work, puppies.
Tangentially Related: I wonder why the author removed his dick pic (well, someone’s…not convinced it was his) from his Twitter. LOL.
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Urgh. I guess I should be grateful for being in Archipelacon and not being able to follow all weird shit that’s going on.
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LOL, sorry. I only knew about it ‘cuz someone mentioned it and I was like “no way?!” and stupidly went to see. I followed a link to a stupid tweet of his yesterday to see replies/context (I’m a glutton for punishment), and just noticed the 4 pix on his main Twitter page were replaced with one regular(ish) pic. Tough to believe he’s a professional (!) author….
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I did warn you. Luckily I believe the IQ points lost by reading that cr@p eventually come back. I can count up to twenty again already.
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Yeah, the IQ loss only tempararry. yr bain gets back 2 wrkng @ fuhll streynth pitty qikly
ladyfingers they taste just like ladyfingers
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And the real tragedy is that this was not the worst thing on the ballot, even in that category.
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